they were stupid and greedy, the oldest trick in the book came back bit them in the rear. Just like JP Morgan hired super tanker to store heating oil off the Malta coast a few years back "In 2011, for instance, an internal Goldman memo suggested that speculation by investors accounted for about a third of the price of a barrel of oil. A commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator, subsequently used that estimate to calculate that speculation added about $10 per fill-up for the average American driver. Other experts have put the total, combined cost at $200 billion a year". MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. â Hundreds of millions of times a day, thirsty Americans open a can of soda, beer or juice. And every time they do it, they pay a fraction of a penny more because of a shrewd maneuver by Goldman Sachs and other financial players that ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars. Aluminum at a Metro International warehouse in Michigan. Enlarge This Image David Walter Banks for The New York Times A furnace at a Novelis aluminum processing plant in Greensboro, Ga. The company is one of the largest buyers of aluminum in the country. Enlarge This Image David Walter Banks for The New York Times Nick Madden, chief procurement officer for Novelis. He said the London Metal Exchange had for years tolerated delays and high premiums, so its proposal, while encouraging, was still a long way from a solution. The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customersâ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again. ...... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/b...t-to-banks-pure-gold.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
"Should Goldman And JPMorgan Control Power Plants, Warehouses And Oil Refiners?" - Live Senate Webcast http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-...er-plants-warehouses-and-oil-refiners-live-se
I'd say no. they'd add another layer of administrative costs for being the middle men. the cost can be reduced by bringing the producer and consumers closer together.